STATE CAPITOL: Clergy ask for moral budget

SPRINGFIELD -- A group of clergy appealed Thursday to lawmakers and Gov. Rod Blagojevich to act morally in drafting a state budget by adequately funding education, health care and human services.

Dana Heupel

By DANA HEUPEL

STATE CAPITOL BUREAU

SPRINGFIELD -- A group of clergy appealed Thursday to lawmakers and Gov. Rod Blagojevich to act morally in drafting a state budget by adequately funding education, health care and human services.

“We must and we can do a better job,” Sen. David Koehler, D-Peoria, said at a Statehouse news conference. Koehler is a minister for a rural Stark County United Church of Christ congregation.

“We call upon our leaders to reach beyond mediocre solutions to acts of moral leadership,” said the Rev. Alexander Sharp, executive director of the Chicago-based Protestants for the Common Good. He and others in the group, Faith Leaders for Fiscal Integrity, said relying on a gambling expansion is not a preferable solution to the state’s financial problems.

The coalition comprises 24 religious leaders from across the state who signed a letter promoting fiscal policy to ensure fairness in education and to address human-services needs. The letter outlining the group’s priorities was delivered to legislators in March.

Sharp and several others said they prefer an increase in income taxes in exchange for lowering property taxes, such as in House Bill 750 and Senate Bill 750. Those measures would key on education funding, but Blagojevich has vowed to veto them if they passed because he pledged not to raise income or sales taxes.

“I think the governor made a pact with the devil to get elected,” said the Rev. Larry Greenfield, executive minister of the Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago, who jokingly offered to perform an exorcism.

Greenfield, who lives in downstate Pesotum, said the governor, who has referred to his quest for a universal health insurance plan as Armageddon, “claims that he is talking to God. I think he is talking to himself.”

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